2004 Audi TT Review

Learn more about the 2004 Audi TT with comprehensive car pricing info, current recall reports & safety data, MPG, car photos, specs & more. Select a research category to learn more about this used car model.

2004 Audi TT

Average Resale Value: $10,940

MPG Range: 20 - 29 mpg

Bodystyles: Coupe, Convertible

First Test: 2004 Audi TT 3.2 Quattro Coupe

250 horses and a wundertrans put the heat on Boxster S

Right up until your first twist of the Audi TT 3.2 quattro's ignition key, you'll be distracted by the car's curious Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG). The promise of its crisp, trigger-pull manual shifting is intriguing, particularly compared with the "one-Mississippi" delay delivered by typical manumatic transmissions.

But ignite the engine. The 250-horsepower narrow-angle V-6 settles into a deliciously throaty burble, the sort of rapid, irregular bass drum roll normally associated with cylinders bigger than this car's 0.53-liter-per-piston swipe. Knock the shifter into D, probe the throttle, and the TT shoves you back with all the kindness of a gangland thug. This latest TT is a lot more than a nifty new tranny.

For instance, if you stomp both of the TT's pedals and pop your left loafer off the brake--as Senior Road Test Editor Chris Walton did during our track-test session--the quattro can repeatedly lurch to 60 mph in 6.1 seconds. Artful footwork? Nope. Audi's Launch-Control acceleration strategy automatically plateaus the revs at 3600 against the brake's resistance and feathers the clutch for an ideal lunge off the line. "I couldn't do better," critiques an impressed (and possibly career-threatened) Walton. On the road, the engine's power offers a ready, liquidy sort of acceleration owing to intake and exhaust camshafts that can advance and retard to optimize the engine's breathing.Matching the authority of the TT's forward thrust is the Teutonic certainty with which the heavily weighted steering directs the Audi's heading. Dial the sausage-thick rim a few degrees, and it's as if steel cables were connecting your hands to the contact patches. Blink, you're re-aimed. That said, there's an absence of two-way communication with the road, as if the steering is delivering a loud filibuster to the front wheels and the asphalt can't get a word in edgewise. And the Audi's 58/42-percent front/rear weight distribution guarantees understeer when your driving slips into fast forward.With the shifter lazily left in drive, the DSG simulates a well-behaved automatic. At shift time, the DSG's twin multiplate clutches simultaneously release and engage in a synchronized electrohydraulic dance, seamlessly alternating the power's route between two shafts, one spinning gears 1, 3, and 5, the other, 2, 4, and 6. Imagine these clutches as your hands, your left tightening as your right opens, and vice versa, back and forth. As one shaft is delivering power, the other is proactively engaging the next probable gear, meaning it's ready and waiting for the clutches to trade workloads again. Adding to the choreography is the throttle-by-wire-controlled engine that revs or slows to match each new ratio.

Now thread your own fingers behind the steering wheel's left and right spokes (there's only about an inch gap between them and the control stalks). A finger tap on the left paddle overrides the automatic to command a downshift; a right click delivers an upshift. Do nothing further, and in 10 seconds automatic mode resumes. What's slick here is the seamless manner in which you can temporarily enter manual mode--just click a paddle.If you decide to be more than a manual-shift interloper, nudge the shifter to the right (where there's an alternative fore/aft toggle slot), and start firing away with the paddles. Based on our iffy internal stopwatch, shifts seem to take about a third of a second per click, but sometimes noticeably longer if you've requested an unanticipated gear (meaning it hasn't been pre-engaged). Our only nitpick is that the operation of the plastic paddles feels more like playing an electronic game than, say, the mechanical authenticity of Ferrari's F1 gun-trigger shifters.Under more casual driving circumstances, you'll notice that the TT traverses road irregularities with sports-car-acceptable thuds, a test of your bottom's tolerance, but one that's forgiven and forgotten the instant you stop and climb out. Likely, this TT 3.2's new 17-inch wheels contribute to the thumping, as do the revised spring and damper settings and immense (i.e., heavy) brakes sourced from the European RS 4. What the performance gods giveth (0.86 g around the skidpad), the ride gods taketh away.The gods of finance, however, will expect a minimum of $39,900 (plus a $690 destination charge) for the opportunity to own this creme de la creme TT. And for it, you'll be visually distinguished from lesser TTs by such trimmings as an aluminum shifter base, a revised front apron with larger air openings, and Xenon headlights. Want to spend more? Another $3000 buys you a drop-top roadster version. But who has time to enjoy trivial distractions such as the wind and the sun when you're busy having so much fun shifting?

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